Monday, December 19, 2016

There have been enormous changes in this area in the 50 plus
years that I’ve been living here, and there have been many things that I grew
up always expecting to remain that no longer do. Wonderful places that no only remain
in photographs, super 8 movies, paintings and my memory. These losses are
things that pain me deeply.

Georgica Pond used to be covered with lily pads so thick
that you couldn’t see the surface of the water as you pushed softly through a
haze of dragonflies with your rowboat, your oars lifting the flower stems which
slide gently off like the thickest, most elegant green noodles you could ever
imagine. Now the waters are 190 acres of dangerously polluted toxic soup.

I used to celebrate my birthday with Mr. Nichol’s and his
pony rides on the triangle of land where the western end of Georgica Road
bifurcates before joining up with Montauk Highway. I got one free turn for each
year of my age and I remember wishing only to be older so that the ride would
last longer. If only I was twelve! I think there was a house on the property and
a tiny barn where my birthday porters spent shivery winters, but for me it was
a tiny slice of heaven. That property, now complete with house and pool, two
years ago was for sale for $3.55 million. Bye bye ponies, I miss you.

From the time you crossed the Shinnecock Canal until you got
out to Montauk there was only one place where, if you looked south on sunny
days, you could see a stretch of silver shimmering just above the dunes, a
sliver of the sea. That was Sagaponack and that view is long gone, visible only
in the paintings of Barbara Thomas and Sheridan Lord.

The enormous dune that I grew up hiding from the wind behind,
building complicated secret dune grass shelters in which imaginary sand fairies
played, and in whose sheltering shoulders I reveled in the power of teenaged
kiss, was erased by hurricane Sandy, rubbed flat as completely as if it had
never existed.

I used to ride my horse bareback from Patsy And Alvin
Toppings Swan Creek Farm diagonally northeast to get to Carvel where we would
both have soft serve ice cream cones. I had chocolate with chocolate sprinkles
and my horse had vanilla with multicolored sprinkles. Then we would swim, or
rather my horse would swim and I’d clutch his mane, as we ventured into Kellis
Pond to cool off. To get there and back we could have headed straight through
the farm fields, without a single house to block our path, the only structure
being the strange bowling pin shaped structure (later learned to be a radio
transmitter for the East Hampton Airport) that lived in Jack Musnicki’s fields.
We stayed on the roads (most of the time) out of respect for the farmer’s crops,
but there was never a more incredible open sky view then that of laying flat
back on your horse’s wet haunches, reins slack as he walked patiently and
determinedly back to the barns, with nothing surrounding you but fields and
clouds.

There have always been out here places where you can
experience wonder, and when they are gone we mourn their losses deeply. I don’t
think it’s just about growing older and losing the ability to see and be and
experience life as a child, although that change is, in it’s own way, somewhat
devastating, and although I wish I could give the people I love the ability to
see this area through the eyes and the heart of my younger self, I wouldn’t
want them to share the pain.

Last week we gained more pain.

A part of me died when I watched the façade of the Sag
Harbor Movie theatre crumble and fold in upon itself. I know they saved the
sign, and that’s great (although it’s not the original sign – that was removed
in 2004) but for me that building was a lot more than just a sign.

What makes us mourn a structure? Is it the way the building
felt? Or the way we felt when we were within it? Or just the loss of the
familiarity of something that has been with us for a long time?

I love the Sag Harbor movie theater and everything it represents.
It determinedly persisted in being the theater I remember it to be, and wanted
it to stay. A single screen theater, like the one on Southampton once was, with
it’s incredible, and to a child, awe inspiring massive chandelier that I still
miss, the Sag Harbor movie theater has been with me my entire life. I am a
regular now and have always been so. I had planned to see Moonlight there last
week, the previous week I had gone with my father to see Tom Ford’s Nocturnal
Animals. We’ve been sharing movies there together my entire life.

I loved the seats, even though I know they were
uncomfortable. I loved that there were no previews. That the popcorn was not
that great. That if this theater didn’t didn’t exist the only way I’d ever see
the films they showed would be if I rented them at home. But isn’t that the
point of going to the movies? To not be in your home. To step out of your own
world and become engulfed in a new one, to sit in a dark room with no hint
what’s going on outside the walls, no idea if the sky is blue or black, and
just be taken to another place by the way colors and sound have been mixed and
rearranged on a huge screen that fills not just your vision, but your whole
soul?

I have fallen in love in that building and also had my heart
broken. I’m been terrified, overjoyed, disappointed, inspired, agitated, filled
with hope, brought to tears, astonished, awed, devastated and laughed until I
couldn’t breathe. I sobbed there so hard once that the strangers sitting a few
seats over from me offered me not just their tissues, but comfort as well. I’ve
been mesmerized, challenged, transported, staggered, amused, educated, and
totally swept away.

I’ve been blessed, as have we all, but now that cavernous
gaping space on Main Street only reflects the enormous gulf in my chest I feel
knowing that The Sag Harbor movie theater is not there anymore. Luckily I know
that the reason we love Sag Harbor is that I am not the only person here that
relies on these kinds of quirky, non-mainstream, noncommercial stories to keep
her whole. And that as a community we will come together to make sure this part
of the Hamptons is not going to be lost forever.

Paige Patterson mourns the drive-in too, but in a different
way, as that’s where she first saw Dumbo.

Monday, November 21, 2016

There are about a billion acorns all over the ground this
fall and people keep asking me what it means. I had always heard that a huge
number of acorns presages a cold winter, a winter that arrives late and is bone
achingly cold, but honestly neither I, nor most scientists that study these
things, really know what triggers these overabundances.

There are lots of trees that have years of overabundance,
and in Europe,
where people have kept notes on the fruiting patterns of many species of trees for
hundreds of years (because that’s what Europeans do) there’s been no real
rhythm or rhyme in environmental clues as to why trees in some years have such a
large number of fruit or nuts.

What we do know is that when oaks do this, they are having
what is a called a mast year. The phrase comes from the word masticate,
and it refers to any fruit, seeds or nuts that any trees or shrubs produce which
could be considered food for animals. A mast year is when a fruiting
tree produces 5 to 10 times as many seeds, or fruits or nuts than it normally
does. Although these bumper crops are cyclical, the cycles don’t seem to be
regular. My apples do this, some years we have crazy heavy crops and the next
many of the trees are much lighter, but not all of my varieties of apples do
this, so I always have a lot of apples, but not always on all my trees. And
it’s not as simple as the heaviest fruiters taking a break the next year. This
year I have three trees that aren’t really producing any apples, but none of
them are the tree that had the most apples. The tree that made the most apples
last year, so many that branches the size of my thigh in diameter snapped and
dropped under the weight, was again this year, just plain overwhelmed with
apples.

But back to our masting acorn trees. According to some
scientists, the phenomenon might be weather related, and since acorns take one
to two years to form and fall (depending on the species), it would be the temperature
and precipitation (or lack of it) from the previous year that determined the rate
of acorn production from year to year. Unfortunately, it’s not can’t be
quite that simple, since masting trees tend to happen simultaneously across a
geographic area so large that the weather patterns within it are too diverse to
be the only cause.

Some believe this widespread synchronization is caused by a
chemical signal or cue the trees are giving off that triggers them to have such
abundance. Another thought is that masting trees are just the results of trees
that are have succeeded in maximizing the efficiency of their pollen. If all
the oaks everywhere can release their pollen simultaneously, they will have a seriously
improved their chances of germination and thus increased acorn production.

Every year oak trees drop acorns, acorns they’ve produced to
guarantee they have offspring. These offspring are the way to ensure the future
of the oak population, so each year every oak tree should try to produce more
acorns than they need to, just to make up for those that the various squirrels,
turkeys, chipmunks, voles, deer and mice (the masticators) are going to eat up
over the winter. And this is the basis of the last theory on masting trees.

In a regular year a single oak tree will produce thousands of
acorns, but in a mast year it can produce up to 10,000 acorns. This strange occasional
cycling of massive amounts of produce and then a dearth (boom and bust) means
that the acorn predators are kept off balance. If a tree produced the same
amount of seeds or apples or nuts every year, the predators of those seeds,
apples and nuts would have a reliable food source and would just keep growing
in population until there were enough of them that the would gobble up every
single thing these trees dropped, and there would be no chance for the trees to
have offspring. Have a few years when there are not a lot of acorns (a series
of bust years) and the population that’s been dining on their nuts will starve
and crash. Then, if you can follow a bust year with a boom year or two, and the
predator population has crashed, some of your boom year acorns will have a
significantly better chance to sprout and become seedling oaks. Evolution will
of course favor those trees that reproduce the best, and the ones that do it by
tricking their predator population with mast years seem to be leading the way.

There are two additional side effects things to a mast year
of which we need to be mindful. First that when there’s plenty of food for the
voles and squirrels and mice, the following year there will be plenty of food
for the predators of these small mammals, the raptors. This is great news, and I’m super
excited that this abundance of acorns means that the owl and hawk populations
are going to explode. Unfortunately one of the top acorn eaters in our area is
the white-footed mouse, and when there’s an explosion of acorns, the following
year there’s normally an explosion of these mice, the same mice that are really
more responsible for the deer tick population in our neck of the woods than the
deer they are named after.

So more acorns also means more mice which means mores ticks which
means more Lyme disease. Sigh. Thanks acorns.

On a side note, when I tried to explain the cycling of the
acorns to my husband Dereyk, he asked why if all these other mammals ate
acorns, humans didn’t and I proudly got to tell him that acorns are actually a
great source of protein, fat, carbohydrates, potassium, vitamin C, magnesium,
calcium, phosphorus and niacin and that the Iberian ham made from pigs fed on a
diet consisting mostly of acorns is thought to taste as good as it does because
the high level of anti-oxidants in the acorns prevents lipid oxidation in the
ham. And of course I added that I had, in fact, once eaten dotorimuk, a thick Jell-O like substance
made from acorns when I was dining in a monk run vegetarian restaurant in
Seoul, but that I wouldn’t make acorns a staple in our food pantry, since most
species contained high levels of tannins that make them awfully astringent and
bitter to the palette. And that acorns were once considered a staple food
substance for Native Americans and that the ancient Greeks partook of them as
well.

Dereyk just shook his head at me and said that right there
was a perfect description of the kinds of people we were. That I was a person
who ate acorns and he was a person that only ate things that ate acorns. And
that he thought he was on the better team, but that next time I had the acorn
Jell-O I should ask them to make it with a lot more sugar.

Monday, October 24, 2016

I discovered a new word today, one that I wish to throw
around with wild abandon and share with everyone. Biophilia. A word first
used by Erich Fromm, a German born American psychoanalyst in his 1973 treatise The
Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, a word he categorized as
being, “the passionate love of life and of all that is alive.”

This word is brilliant. This is a word that explains everything
about the choices I made as I've moved forward and deeper into the world I
define as my own. It encompasses everything I believe in. That I am
happiest when I am able to walk on the beach with my toes digging deeply into
the sand. That when I'm out of sorts I can go outside and stroke the leaves of
my trees and change my mood. That just noticing that my tulpelo tree (Nyssa
sylvatica) is a female and thus is covered with tiny black fruits with which
the birds are celebrating will lift me to a different place than
where I was before I spotted them. That no matter how stressed I am, spending a
moment or two scratching a furry critter's head will make me breathe easier.
It’s why carrying a twig of the electric fall foliage of a witch hazel around
the garden and sometimes sticking it behind my ear changes my outlook on
everything. I’m thrilled to possess this word.

According to Edward O. Wilson, the entomologist
Curator of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard and a Pulitzer Prize
winner, who wrote a book titled Biophilia
in 1984, this condition is, "the urge to affiliate with other forms of
life." It is this urge, he posits, that when followed, brings us to places
of great joy.And it is an urge
that every human on the planet feels. In his book Wilson hypothesizes that it
is this innate relationship we have with the natural world that will allow us
to perhaps save it. He talks about how we not only have a practical dependence
on nature (without clean water and usable soil we would all die) but that we
also find solace and peace and emotional sustenance through our direct
interactions with nature.

The natural world inspires us to make art, we find it’s sounds soothing
and it’s visuals beautiful. Thus landscape painting and ocean recording to send
us to sleep. I challenge anyone to find the sound of rain on a tin roof
upsetting. We mimic its smells to make both ourselves and our homes more
enticing, and are uplifted by the appearance of a rainbow for no other reason
than it is beautiful. We create strong emotional attachments with both the land
and with it’s other many creatures, and it’s all of this combined that makes us
whole.

But many of us have grown disconnected from that wholeness, especially
our children. They don’t have the same easy way with their natural surroundings
that I, and many of their parents did. And it’s sad. It’s easy to blame
technology, especially when you watch people you love staring at their various
screens instead of watching the clouds rapidly shape shift on windy days. I
want to drag those kids into the garden with me. I feel like an old person
whenever I start a sentence with, “When I was that age….” But it’s true. When I
was that age my world was accessible only by bicycle and I didn’t have a computer
to play on. I had the back yard or a park or a garden or fields, woods and the
beach. I knew that fall was not far away when the dragonflies thickened above
my head and that winter was coming because of the smell in the air. I burned
leaves, I climbed trees and I played in the dirt. I picked up caterpillars and
tried to get butterflies to land on my nose. I had an intimate relationship
with my outdoors, whether pressing fall foliage in the family’s heaviest
dictionary, or cuddling with kittens in a farming friend’s hayloft. I wish I
could force these experiences on the children I know and love, but it doesn’t
work that way. They have to be coaxed, not dragged.

I was in a bad mood this morning, having not slept well and having
worriedly spun myself up over all sorts of mental noodles, and I was irritated
that I had to get up extra early to forage for a class I was teaching on how to
decorate with things you can find outdoors. The trunk of my car wasn’t working
and I couldn’t find the clippers I wanted and I broke a dried allium seed head
I had hoped to use for this year’s Christmas tree as a star, so I started off the
day pretty cranky. Gathering armfuls of purple and red foliage, slicing aged,
faded, pink tardiva like panicle hydrangea flowers on arm length long stems and
clipping branches ladened with berries helped. Noticing the bees leaving the
hives in their endless search for sweetness helped. Smelling the errant mint
that was captured by mistake with handfuls of purple flowered monkshood helped.
The sky being electric blue helped as did the wind that blew all the anger from
within my soul as it whipped my hair around my head like a wound up basket of
cobras being directed by an overly enthusiastic snake charmer. By the time I
got to work and started assembling all my pieces into an enormous vase I was
calmer. And thankful. And happy.

I want to share this feeling, this biophilia, with everyone. I want to
scream from the rooftop that everything is better when we stay
connected with the natural world. I want to take each and every one of you out
on the same walk I made through my garden this morning and share the way my
brain’s song changed from strident and jagged to melodious. Let us all get
muddy together, let us walk through rivers up to our knees and have the socks
in our boots get soggy. Let us rub up against another living thing that isn’t
human and whisper to it all our secrets, both fabulous and burdensome. Let us
breathe deeply of this fresh fall air and embrace all that nature has
surrounded us with. Let us reek with gratitude.

Paige Patterson has seven nonhumans cuddled up with her on the couch
this evening and couldn’t be happier.

Monday, September 26, 2016

When I bought my house 20 plus years ago, I hadn’t actually
been in the structure. In fact the only time I had even been on the property
was ages earlier, when as a child, I had decided that I wanted to meet the man
who was raising bees in an ancient collection of hives and had three enormous
apple trees. I had always told my family, or whoever was in the car as we drove
past his hedges, that when I grew up I wanted to own the Bee Man’s house. In
retrospect I find it fascinating that I had the hubris to walk up to a
stranger’s front door and knock on it in full expectation of getting a tour,
but it was a different time, and I really wanted to know what it was like to
raise bees. Plus I think my parents must have encouraged me.

It was an awkward conversation. The gentleman didn’t have a
lot of experience with precocious children, and I was used to having adults
think me charming, something this gentleman obviously wasn’t feeling about the
little blonde at his door. I don’t remember much about our conversation, other
than speaking about the mint that was growing all over his property, and his
telling me his frustration that when you bought packages of peppermint, many of
the seeds were actually for spearmint instead. At the time I wasn’t as knowledgeable
of the differences in mint as I now am, and I call vividly recall chewing the
pungent leaves he handed me and thinking that what he was calling spearmint,
didn’t really taste the same as the Doublemint gum that was my only other
spearmint taste comparison. I can still feel the fuzzy buzz of the leaves
against my tongue, and to this day associate the taste of spearmint with a
general sense of awkward anxiousness and a need to please.

I think he showed me his bees and we must have spoken about
the apples, because before I bought the property I knew that the biggest tree
actually had two different varieties of apples, one of which was a clear,
yellow, sweet fruit and that the first tree was created with many grafts, all
of which were of the same apple, just cut from one side of the tree and grafted
to the other. At the time I thought it was a peculiar thing to do, to graft
branches of a tree back onto itself, and although I now understand that he was
just experimenting and playing, I vividly remember wanting to understand his
motivation, but being too scared to ask. He must have told me what the various
names of the apples were, but I didn’t carry that knowledge forward. I wish I
knew now, but I’m afraid I have no clue. All I know now is that I have one of
the largest apple trees in the area, and when fall comes, I have way too many
apples rolling around the lawn.

Too many apples doesn’t sound like a terrible problem does
it? A surplus bounty of deliciousness, shouldn’t make you crazy, but trust me
it does. As I too, raise bees, each year my apple trees are loaded, and there
are way more apples than I can make into pies, applesauce and dumplings,
crumbles, smoothies and juice. I am an apple butter queen, it’s deeply
fabulous, but I still have tons left over from last years harvest, and each day
more and more fruits fall to the ground. Fruits that I just can’t pick up fast
enough. It’s a Sisyphean process, the picking up of apples from the lawn. I
pick them all up in buckets, gathering all the ones that are still fit to eat
in piles on the front porch while the rest get dumped into the compost pile. If
I don’t get them fast enough, the wasps and hornets find them and feast upon
their sweet nectar. There is nothing quite like stepping on an apple satiated
hornet with your bare foot, trust me it’s an experience you’d like to avoid.
Both my dogs and myself have suffered the nasty biting pain of a stinger in the
toe, and so we always have a good supply of Benadryl stocked up for the fall.

Worse of all, I soon have too many apples to be able to
process them properly. So I start to give them away. I start leaving them on
friends’ stoops, and then on acquaintances’ stoops, soon start thinking about
leaving them on strangers’ front steps. And then I start throwing perfectly
fine apples away. The compost pile becomes a pungent, apple cider vinegar smelling
mess and I feel guilty, it’s such a waste. I send out emails to people who like
to bake. “It’s apple pie season,” the subject reads, “come on over.” And I
start to fall behind. There are just too many. Before I had a deer fence, I
used to come home to herds hanging out beneath the trees, mothers, daughters,
nephews and aunts all feasting, wet juices running down their chins. And I was
grateful for their voracious appetites. Now maybe I should put them out on the
road in baskets with a sign that reads “free” like the abandoned sofas and
broken furniture that I sometimes spot lounging on the edge of people’s
driveways.

The worst part is that they’re not really pretty apples, so
people are hesitant to accept them. The clear yellow ones are super juicy and
sweet but every year they’re spotted with a strange case of red freckles. Of
all my apples, they would be the most visually acceptable to those you claim to
like apples, but the measles make people nervous, we’ve all become too
accustomed to perfect looking fruits. The rest have rough skins, and brown
sides, that look unappetizing, but are the best apples I’ve ever worked with as
a cook (thus my amazing apple butter) and are actually my preferred eating fruits.
The taste of these apples is richer, more complex and for me, more rewarding to
eat. They call apples that have this kind of skin russets. Russets are amazing
apples, they last longer than most apples and their flavors are prized by fruit
connoisseurs. Most modern apples have had the russet bred out of them, along
with their richer, denser flesh, as the modern shopper prefers a shiny apple
with a cruncher bite.

Call me old fashioned, but I wouldn’t trade my apples for
the store bought variety any day, but it does mean that each time I hand them
over I have to give a little history lesson on the perils of modern shipping
techniques for heritage flavors. Sometime people listen and sometimes people
smile at me like I’m a little crazy. That’s fine, we already know I’m a little
crazy, but it doesn’t mean I’m not right about the apples. Don’t believe me?
Feel free to stop by and grab a couple of the fruits off my front tree and try
them yourself. Actually while you’re at the house why don’t you take as many
apples as you can. And take a few for your friends too, and for any strangers
you might know, or anyone you might know who has room on their front steps for
a bushel of apples or two. Or three. Please. My compost pile is already really,
really full.

Paige Patterson wishes she had are many figs as she has
apples, but has yet to succeed in getting them to bare any fruit.

Monday, August 15, 2016

An impinged nerve. That’s what they tell me it is, but in my
language, it’s sharp shooting pain in my arm and an electric buzzing in my
thumb and pointer finger whenever I reach for anything with my right hand.
Can’t pull weeds, can’t dig holes, can’t transplant, can’t deadhead. All I can
do is look.

It’s good for me. It’s teaching me to really see. It’s
frustrating, but educational, and that’s always a good thing. Or so I keep
telling myself.

It’s not great for the garden. My garden has exploded with
weeds, with flowers too, the dahlias are battling the tomatoes for room and the
roses that a friend is deadheading for me are getting ready to blow up with
color all over again, but a garden is a living breathing thing, at least the
way mine is created, and it’s got to be kept in check.

But really, the thing that’s making me uncomfortable is that
now that I can’t just bury my head in the weeds that I’m pulling, and I’m being
forced to look around the garden and really take it in I can see that some part
need more help than just a deep weeding.Some parts need rethinking. All gardens need rethinking sometimes, or at
least parts of them do, and being forced to stop and really look at your garden
from a far, instead of being immersed in it working, lets you see what’s
working and what’s failing.

August has always been the best time to see what’s what in
the garden. And to make plans. At almost any other time, if you see something
that’s off you’ll probably grab a shovel and do a little rearranging, or remove
the offender and put something else in it’s place, but in August most of what
we are doing in the garden is making sure all our new additions have plenty of
water and trying to keep the weeds at bay. In August, when you notice something
is off you need to make a note and address it later, and that’s a skill that
some of us don’t really have.

I’m an immediate gratification kind of a girl. Not a sit and
ponder on it person. If one plant is being swamped by another, or if a color
combination is jarring and out of place, I'll address it immediately. Right now
I can’t, and in August, you really shouldn’t anyway – it’s too hot to
transplant, so I’m getting a seriously long overdue lesson in observing and planning.
Luckily I can still take notes, and I’m doing so with a vengeance. I’m filling
up pages in my garden moleskins with what I hope won’t be too cryptic notes and
scribbles for this fall, next spring, and the garden in general.

These a couple of the things you should think about when
taking notes.

What parts of the
garden are bugging you the most? Or what do you have to do before it makes
you crazy? For me it’s the Joe pyeweed on the east side of the ex-veggie garden
that needs to be transplanted, as does the Ironweed on the west side of the
garage. And I need to dig up and toss almost all my daylilies. After having
been eaten by deer for so long previously they’ve all reverted to one that is a
funny double orange with a red throat. At least that’s what I think has
happened, I can’t image I ever choose of planted these garish things. They all
need to be ripped out and discarded and replaced with the peach and pink and
cream colored ones I started with ages ago. There’s a couple that need to be
saved and I need to mark those with red ribbon so they are saved, but there’s a
lot to be discarded fearlessly. The ostrich ferns need to be eradicated from
under the apple trees and the wild plums more completely.

What part of the
garden needs a little fiddling? The asparagus by the garage is swamping the
gooseberry next to it, so one of them needs to move, and the plain green hostas
I got as freebies need to be thinned and transplanted into various other shady
spots so that there’s more room for variation in foliage and texture in the bed
where they presently huddle. There’s a big gaping spot under the viburnums in
the front west side bed which needs filling and the bed under the pear tree
needs something medium sized right in front of the truck and behind the astrantia,
with something that will pair well with phlox. That bed also needs to not be
allowed to fill in with Dame’s Rocket next year as it’s removal is too
destructive and noticeable. There’s also a rogue hydrangea that’s popped up by
the Heller’s Japanese holly by the basement door that needs a proper home and
those hollies need to be pruned back so that you can actually use the back door
to get in and out of the kitchen.

Would things look
better it they were pruned?Would you get more light? I‘ve scribbled notes about the beech tree that
we keep lifting up and a few magnolias I want to shape as well as on those
things that need to be cut back hard this year, like the rose of sharon behind
the chicken coop or perhaps even removed entirely, like the jetbead that is the
rose of sharon’s neighbor. Then there are shrubs and trees that need to be cut
back so you can travel throughout the garden. I’ve got a whole page of notes on
those.

When you look out
your windows what do you see? From most of my windows the view is pretty
good except for the two little lime hydrangeas and two roses in the front bed that
need to be dug up and moved from the front of the bed to about halfway back.
This is only because I had to transplant an enormous corylopsis from that middle
spot to the back of the property, but by doing so I threw off the balance in
that bed so the front feels too tall and heavy and needs these four shrubs
centered where the corylopsis used to be. I sometime also use photographs as a
way of taking notes. And as a way of helping me remember. Now that we all have
a phone in our cell phones, it’s easy to photograph the view from my computer
so that I can see exactly where I need to add in more late summer color and the
spot by those hydrangeas so that next spring I’ll know exactly how high I need
the shade tolerant plant I’m choosing for that spot to grow. It was a great
tool this spring when I finally shot places in the garden that I want to add
bulbs, and much easier to refer than notes are when locating exact placements.

Is there anything you
have to walk and find or do you see the whole thing in one shebang? I have
an entire perennial border that you have to trek to the back forty to see. It’s
fantastic. There’s a picnic table back there as a reward for having slogged the
whole way back, but it should be nicer, a better table and seating. And while I’m
on the subject of visually attractive objects, wouldn’t it be nice to have
sculptures in the garden? Ornaments you only see by walking through the entire
garden, or mobiles hanging from some of the trees. Or more benches so I could
actually go to a part of the garden as a destination and not just keep passing
through on my way through the thing.

Does your garden have
a focal point? Do you need one? I have an ancient crab apple that serves as
a focal point for the long view down my garden, and I’m lucky in that I’m
planted out all my neighbors for most of the season, so no matter where I’m
sitting or standing or walking I have something interesting to look at, that’s
either giving me a place to rest my eyes or inviting my to come closer and give
it a closer look. My compost pile is the only unsightly thing in the garden,
but I kind of dig it and it’s really not too exposed at all.

Does your garden have
too much variety or not enough? I’ve been good here, buying things in
masses as opposed to one at a time. It’s meant that I’ve had to pass up a
couple of interesting plants, but it also means the garden beds look more
coherent, less a mish mash of random cool things. And being a plantaholic means
there’s no way my garden doesn’t have enough variety, it’s genetically
impossible.

When you pull in with
your car is the view always attractive or is it really nice only at one point
of the season and the rest of the year it’s boring? Most of the time this
bed looks pretty nifty, but there’s a supposedly variegated dogwood that has
reverted to being almost entirely green by the front driveway needs to just be
ripped out and disposed of. Not because it’s not a lovely tree, it is, but it’s
taking up a lot of real estate in that front bed without being interesting for
enough seasons. And although the path to the kitchen from the cars works
perfectly, the Limelight hydrangea and the Lemon Queen heliopsis flop onto it
too often when it rains. These they need to be moved somewhere else.

Is there anything
that just isn’t working anymore? Actual the bed with the heliopsis
mentioned above, unfortunately, needs to be entirely rethought. This bed holds
my hummingbirds’ monarda but is swamping under its onslaught, what was once a
hint of red is now a seething mass and although fun for the hummers, it’s
slightly overwhelming for me. It’s also not that attractive a plant after it
blooms. And it’s in prime, walk past it twice every single day real
estate.In the spring the bed is
delightful, although could use more bulbs, but when I compare mid spring photos
with mid august photos it’s obvious that there needs to be a big overhaul here.

The same thing needs to happen in the ex-vegetable garden. That
garden is gorgeous right through June, but as July barreled in and all of last
years forgotten and unharvested potatoes started really getting going, it went
feral. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t address it this past fall, just threw
tulip bulbs everywhere and again this spring I neglected to try and get it under
control so now I officially have chaos. I don’t need any notes or photographs
to tell me this, because when you have to bushwhack your way in to find your
swallowed up pepper plants it’s easy to see have far everything has gotten away
from me. I normally can ignore this problem by ripping out spent cilantro
(coriander anyone?) and using twine or yarn to pull plant up and off the paths,
but this year I can’t even begin to make headway. I certainly can’t tie twine
without my right hand and where in past years I’d start by harvesting the
potatoes which would at least give me a little breathing room, this year I’m
having a hard time figuring out how to use a spade or a garden fork with only
one arm.

So I’m using my imagination instead. I’m visualizing how it
would look with a larger path and a paved area for seating in the center. I’m
scribbling down that the fritillarias need more sun and that there’s a nice
transplantable daylily in there, but most of my imagination is captured by the
possibilities of change. Should it only really be about roses? Will I be
willing to stop sneaking in vegetables after swearing off them for the last two
years and then caving in?

And then from there I’m flowing outwards. The bed with the
lavender which is so terribly, terribly sandy, should I make that a place for
edibles and rework all the soil or is the idea of walking back there on a daily
basis laughable when I don’t even pluck cucumbers with any regularity that are
within cat throwing distance of the house right now. Perhaps I need to simplify
back there, and move the perennials back there up front and fill their empty
spaces with shrubs that have become way too thuggish upfront. Or maybe that’s
where all my extra red monarda from will go.

And then there’s the bed under the wisteria. The wisteria
has become so dense that the only thing the plants in that bed are doing is
suffering. And the paths are getting too narrow, so should I replant the whole
thing or should I just suck it up and try and dig out the wisteria? Is that
super crazy?

Oh dear, I’m starting to feel entirely overwhelmed, maybe I
need to put my head down between my knees and breathe, but wait, what’s that
feeling I have deep, deep inside me? Huh? That feels a little like excitement,
and a teasing of possibility. So maybe this not gardening thing isn’t going to
be all bad.

Paige Patterson hasn’t held a trowel in 6 weeks and is going
through withdrawal.

Monday, July 11, 2016

Yesterday, while my husband and I were sitting on our kitchen porch reviewing the day as it started to slowly pink up at the edges, we had eight hummingbird sightings. Now, don’t know exactly how many resident jewels we have flinging themselves across my flower beds, but we did spot two males dueling over the rights to the Jacob Kline monarda just moments after a female was feeding right around the corner, so I know there are at least three individuals.

I am a hummingbird junkie and once you have your first hummingbird visitor, all you want is more – so I’m always trying to find ways to coax these beauties into dropping by, or moving in permanently. And although feeders are certainly an option when it comes to attracting these beauties, there’s a few things you need to understand about hummingbird behavior to get as many as you can. We know that the name hummingbird comes from the purring or vibrating sound of their wings beating almost 90 times a second, but that's not the only thing about a humming birds that's speedy. They also have an accelerated heartbeat, a incredibly rapid breathing rate and a high body temperature, which means they burn an amazing number of calories each moment so hummingbirds needing to eat often and voraciously. They have an impressively long tongue with which they lick their food at a rate of up to 13 licks per second, sucking up almost half their body weight in nectar each day, nectar being their primary food source along with tree sap, insects and pollen, so feeders with their artificial nectar might sound like a good way to attract them, but there's one other fact about hummingbirds that might point you in a different direction.

Hummingbirds don't like to share their food.

They're territorial, so even though they are only about 3 ¾ inches long and weigh about the same as a couple of paperclips, they'll defend their territories with the aggression and determination of much larger critters. I’ve seen male pursue other males for hours at a time, and even go after other larger birds. They're fearless. I know those video clips on Facebook with throngs of hummers crowding around a feeder makes us all want to run out and invest in a few dozen, but in my experience it’s rare that a male hummingbird will share his food sources willingly. And since each male demands a territory of about a quarter acre, having all your feeders clustered on the porch so you can see these beauties might be fun for you, but it’s going to be stressful for the birds. At my house, if there are two males in the same space they will dive bomb each other making sharp chirps (playing chicken so to speak) until one gives up and flies away. The victor will then return to sip in all his solitary glory. So instead of a bouquet of feeders containing liquified processed sugar and sometimes even red dye all of which also have to be cleaned religiously, and which (in my experience) hummingbirds don’t want to share –– feeders which also leak all over the porch attracting not just ants and bees, but vicious, nasty, attacking yellow jackets, I’m a proponent of the planted approach.

The planting approach is simple, just fill your property with plants that are ladened with nectar and place them all over the whole yard. I did, and now with my 2.5 acres, I've hypothetically created room for up to 10 males and their families. Doesn’t that sound like a lot more fun? I already mentioned monarda as one of my favorite hummingbird attractions, but before I give you a plant list, I’d like to clear up a little misconception. Yes hummingbirds are attracted to and love red flowers; it's a color that they can "see" from miles away, so they're super attracted to those plants; but they also will drink from any heavily nectared plant. So certainly, add some red plants, but don't be limited to only scarlet, crimson, ruby and cerise. Yes they love my enormous clump of Jacob Kline monarda, but they also think my Marshall's Delight and Purple Rooster are pretty glorious as well.

Monarda (Bee Balm) has the top spot on my list of hummingbird attractors, so if there’s only room for one more plant in your yard, this should be it, but if you want to guarantee these iridescent visitors return to your garden year after year, and you have the room, there’s a plethora of plant possibilities I can recommend.

The entire salvia family will satiate hummingbirds as will any weigela you decide will add beauty to a shrub border. I am partial to the annual salvia called Black and Blue, you I've had them feed from both annual and perennial varieties. Personally, I have about 12 or so weigela scattered around my property, but I am sort of mad for the Sonic series as their ability to rebloom is fairly impressive. I'm not sure that they are as nectar rich as some of the old fashioned cultivars (they're fairly new to my garden) so if you want to be sure you're getting the biggest bang for your buck get a cultivar that's been around for a while. What both these plants have in common is a tubular flower which is a perfect fit for the long bill of the hummingbird in it's quest for the nectar buried deep inside each bloom.

Since hummingbirds tend to show up and hang out in the garden from Mother's Day through Labor day, it's important that you choose plants that will be available through their entire visit – another reason annuals are always on my humming bird list. Fuchsias are a necessity, so I've always got a few stuck in pots in shadier spots around the garden and shrimp plants are also something they go crazy for, although I'm not such a huge fan. I prefer petunias, lantana, snapdragons and nicotiana, the last two of which I stick randomly into any bed where I have room, As an aside, once you have nicotianas they will tend to self seed willy nilly (if, of course you don't weed up the seedlings) and I also collect and save my own seeds to toss about with abandon in the spring.

Columbine, hostas, foxgloves, heuchera are all fabulous perennials to incorporate into your planting beds, and if you have a spot for a honeysuckle to ramble through, please plant at least one. I have one at the rear of my property and a trumpet vine that’s finally throwing itself over my porch roof for whomever has staked out their territory by the house. When planting I always advise massing plants and repeating them throughout the garden to make sure your plantings don’t look too hodge podge, but your hummer friends also want to visit a patch of the same species (three or more plants) to really get a good quantity of nectar. Cardinal flowers are a perfect plant in heavier soil, and they will create their own clump (as the monarda do of course) so those are definitively a hummingbird have to have.

In the shrub realm, flowering quince is a good early plant while butterfly bush is a great way to end the summer and clethra is sometimes even given the common name Hummingbird Plant. I've been told that the Red Buckeye is a good hummingbird magnet, but I can't speak from experience since it's one of the few trees I don't have on my property. In an interesting aside, hummingbirds can only perch on their feet, they can’t use them to stand on a flat surface, nor can they walk, so it’s also important to choose plants they will feel comfortable resting in for those few moments when their wings aren’t going or when they decide to make a nest.

I’m still hoping to find a hummingbird nest somewhere on my property. The nests are tiny and almost impossibly hard to spot, with eggs the size of jellybeans, and I have yet to find one in any of my trees or shrubs, but I’m continuing to look. I believe there must be at least one here somewhere since the number visitors seems to be increases yearly. I like to think I’m feeding generations. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden website gives a great and sometimes forgotten tip on creating a hummingbird friendly environment when they suggest we include some fuzzy plants in our planting plans. Hummingbirds like to line their nest with soft plant fibers, and according the BBG, two of their favorites are the fuzzy stem of the cinnamon fern and pussy willows. They also suggest we let some thistle and dandelion go to seed just for the fluffy, down like fuzz that’s so attractive to the as nest-building materials for the hummers in your yard.

I like thinking that the dancing seeds of dandelions are making tiny little beds more snuggly. It’s one of the best excuses I’ve ever come up with for leaving the dandelions in my lawn. That and the fact that they’re also dream food for bees.

Paige Patterson hasn’t been able to weeds for over three weeks and her garden is out of control

Monday, June 13, 2016

June was an extraordinary month for roses. They were off the
hook. People keep coming up to me and telling me how amazing their roses are
and I’m loath to crush their spirits, but this year everyone’s roses were
incredible. I chalk it up to a very dry winter and spring and therefore far
fewer opportunities for black spot to do it’s decimating dance, but also the
mildness of the weather meant fewer delicate beauties had a chance to do the
dieback and death thing. But now it’s July and if you haven’t been vigilant the
weeds are fairly impressive as well.

I gauge my weeding success by the garden cartful. Tuesday I
had four – well technically five, but I left the cart in the garden as there
was still room for a few more green bodies before it got dragged to the compost
pile. Today I have almost a hundred ferns to get into the ground, but first I
must weed. I’m not big on weeding. As I’ve written before I try and plant so
densely that the weeds don’t have room to establish, much less grow and bloom,
but I let my hesperis (Dame’s Rocket) run rampant this spring and now as I rip
each collapsed clump out of the soil, I have smothered perennials, and
therefore quite a few gaping holes to deal with. But I’m fine with it. It’s
just an opportunity to buy more plants.

Weeding can be an almost meditative activity if you allow it
to be, as you must focus when you are weeding. If not, you will rip good plants
out with the bad, especially if you let the weeds get out of control. So it’s
best to do a little weeding everyday. And those of us who do, are rewarded with
a repetitive activity that helps you learn to be totally engaged in the
present. Totally focused on what you are doing. Being in the moment, not
thinking about what you should have done, or what you can do in the future, but
concentrating on the actions your hands are taking is the best way I’ve found
to relax and let go. Not of the root I’m teasing out of the soil, but of the
day. It is a good thing to focus. To be present enough to see which stalks are
good, which are bad, which needs both hands and which needs just a little
finger scuffle to be removed. Some roots need to come out completely, some
roots can just have their foliage snipped off and some roots are actually
useful. Useful you ask? What weed is useful? Well technically, the dandelion
works as a wick for calcium, bringing it up through the soil to the leaves of
the plant, which if left to decay will release the nutrient back to the surface
of the soil for other plants to take up.

Hmm? Not that interested in letting dandelions take over
your lawn and garden beds? I understand. However if, like me, you have bees,
you will have learned how much they love and appreciate the golden suns of the
dandelions flowers as a food source.I have become tolerant of dandelions, although I do try and pop off the
heads before they become the lion manes of seeded fluff. I’m somewhat
successful, but I still have quite a few dandelions, and I accept that. It’s
one of the most Zen things I do.

Gardening has taught me to accept imperfections and to enjoy
chance encounters. I have a purple cleome that in now blooming along with
Lauren Grape Poppies in a place I don’t remember seeding either plant, but they
are beautiful. They clash somewhat with the scarlet Jacob Kline monarda that
dominates the bed where they’ve decided to grow, but so does the unnamed ripe
peach colored rose that has determined the middle of the monarda patch is the
only place in my garden where it will thrive. It’s not a color theme I would
have chosen, but all four of these plants’ successes make me happy. And that
happiness helps me breathe.

Learning to breathe, learning to be, accepting the garden
for what it is instead of focusing on what it could be; these are all lessons
that have helped me in all different moments of life, and if I remember to
think of them when facing stressful situations, I handle myself better. I have
learned, the hard way, that if you go out to the garden to weed and you are
upset or angry or frustrated, and you don’t leave those emotions by the “garden
gate” so to speak, you fail. You rip up the peas when trying to remove jewelweed,
you get handfuls of nepeta instead of creeping Charlie. Those emotions do not
work when weeding. You have to stop holding on to them so tight. You have to put
down the wrongs of the day, the week, the year and instead pick up a trowel.

This year I’m frustrated by many things in life, as I am
almost every year, but I’m not bringing those feelings out among the roses. The
weeds themselves could be another source of frustration if I let them, but the
felling of accomplishment, of a job well done when I rediscover the cucumber
that has been buried beneath pokeweed and black locust seedling, is a feeling
that is too lovely to deny.

I am embracing my weeds and their removal as a gift from the
universe, the chance to feel joy from clearing an entire bed of nut sedge, the
pleasure of astrantia, long hidden finally getting a chance to extend itself up
to the sun. The height with which my compost pile is building up to the sky is
a visual reinforcement of accomplishment.And for that I am grateful. Not that I’m volunteering to come weed your
garden anytime soon. I have plenty of my own weeds. In my garden and in the
rest of my life, but I am grabbing them by the roots and removing them,
sometimes careful, something with a ferocious vigor, but with lately, with more
and more success.

Paige Patterson is running out of room in her garden but
that hasn’t stopped any plants from jumping into her car.

Friday, May 13, 2016

No one knows
how to pronounce the word clematis. I pronounce it
KLEM-UH-TIS but many others pronounce it KLEE-MAH-TIS. The truth is, there’s no
real, 100% correct way to pronounce it, as we have no one who still really
speaks Latin to correct our pronunciation the way Parisians do when I try and
use their native tongue to get directions to Giverney or to purchase a baguette.
The fact is, that unless you are reversing the syllables or dropping them (as I
sometimes am guilty of doing) it is always better to ask for a plant by its
botanic name instead of its common one, even if you mangle the Latin a little
in the process.

The reason is
simple. Plants have far too many common names and they are super confusing.
Doesn’t a garden filled with Our Lady in a Boat, Chinese Pants, Venus’s Car,
Lyre Flower, Bleeding Heart and Lady’s Locket sound super? Like a fabulous
cottage garden filled with the most wonderful flowers right? Unfortunately, such
a garden would just be a solid mass of Dicentra spectabilis, since those are
all names by which it is known.

When we make plant
tags at the nursery we always try and put both the Latin and the common name on
the tags, but the large number of common names can sometimes make that a little
complicated. Salvia splendens ‘Bonfire’ could be
commonly called Bonfire Scarlet Sage. Or it could be Bonfire Splendid Sage. Or
even Bonfire Tropical Sage. With a common name all three words are capitalized
and the name starts with the cultivar (without the single quotes used to
indicate it’s a cultivar in the Latin name) and is followed by the most common,
common name, each word of which is capitalized, i.e. Scarlet Sage.

So who
determines which common name to use? Well at most nurseries, it’s the person making
the tags, so when I was entering the information, I would use the word Hosta for
both the common and the Latin name of that plant, but technically I’d be wrong.
The correct common name is Plantain Lily, although Funkier is used to be the
more common, common name. But in common usage hosta is the word all our
gardeners use. Should we use Coral Bells or Alumroot when referring to plants
in the heuchera family? I never call artemesia Wormwood, I just call it Artemesia,
the same way I refer to forsythia, magnolia, hydrangeas, and clematis by their Latin
names only. I’d never call a gingko a Maidenhair Tree but I’ve do call aruncus
Goatsbeard. So it’s a dilemma.

Not that
figuring out the Latin names is any easier. You would think the professionals growing
these plants would use a consistent source of information to be the
reference guides but in the world of perennials, annuals and herbs, but there
doesn’t seem to be one. Allan Armitage, a god in horticultural circles, tends
to be the most up to date on the perennials and annuals, but even he has said
it is impossible to keep up in a printed form as names and cultivars keep
changing, growing and expanding.

He has written
the textbook on perennials, and another on annuals, biennials and half-hardy
perennials and we treat both as bibles in the Marders reference library, but
there are too many plants that are not classified within them. The Royal
Horticultural A-ZEncyclopedia of
garden plants is also a good source, but it too is not that up to date. And
online listings don’t really help either – much to my distress the Brooklyn
Botanic Garden uses the Andersen Horticultural Library's Plant Information Online,
which only uses the first part of the Latin binomial.

“Wait, wait, wait
Paige, what the heck is a binomial?” I hear you ask.I’m so glad you asked.

A
plant’s botanical name consists of two words, and is therefore referred to as a
"binomial." The first word
represents the larger group the plant belongs to, the genus, and its first
letter is always capitalized. The second word is the species and it is always
lowercase. A plant’s binomial name should be written in
full but lots of nurseries and growers and plant breeders don’t bother.

Most growers
actually sell the above-mentioned salvia as Salvia Bonfire, without bothering
with the single quotes or the second half of the binomial.Which makes me crazy. Not because I’m a
control freak (although I am a tad) but because when you see a list of plants
to buy from and only the first part of the name is used, you really have no
idea what you’re getting. I happen to love Salvia
nemorosas and loathe Salvia
verticillatas, so luckily, because I am a plant junkie, I know that ‘Hypnotic
Purple’ and ‘Salute Pink’ are salvias I want to try but that I can skip
‘Endless Love’ – but does a regular, non-plantaholic know the difference? I
think nemorosas are significantly better plants, but if a first time gardener
buys a plant named Salvia ‘Endless Love’ and is disappointed it’s the way
verticillatas look and perform, they’re going to think all salvias are sort of
blah and are going to miss out of some excellent plants.

Other then
the basic binomial a Latin name can include subspecies, varieties and
cultivars. A subspecies (preceded by the abbreviation "subsp.") is a
geographically separate population within a species that is almost, but not
quite, a separate species. A
botanical variety (preceded by "var.") is a distinct variant
occurring in the same populations as ordinary examples of a species. Both of these
additions are really not necessary for the home gardener to know, so it’s up
for debate as to whether they should go onto our tags. If you know plants, you know
that sometime they’re helpful but very few people in the business of retailing
plants use them, including most of the vendors we work with in the perennial
and annual world. I know, I know, I hear you yawning but hear me out.

A
cultivar (CULTIvated VARiety), or selection, is a type that is not naturally
occurring. These have been bred or crossed or chosen for some special
characteristic. Cultivar names are a word or words in a modern language (NOT
Latin) set off in single quotes and capitalized, but not italicized, such as
Salvia splendens ‘Bonfire’.

Hybrids,
or crosses between different species, are given unique names that are preceded
with an x, indicating that this plant is a hybrid between two species — for
example, Salvia x superba is a hybrid of S. sylvestris and S. villicaulis.
Sometimes that "x" inadvertently gets dropped along the way; this
plant is often listed as Salvia superba. And I’m not positive that many of the
people who sell us these plants even know for sure when something is a cross or
not, and even less know what that cross is.At the nursery we can decide on having the x or taking it
out. I tend to leave it in but I am a maniac.

Another
problem we have is that when botanists make taxonomic name changes as a result
of advances in botanical knowledge (e.g. the Chrysanthemum genus was recently
split into eight different genera, including Dendranthema, Tanacetum, and
Leucanthemum) it may take years for the horticultural industry to adopt them,
but should we be up to date with the changes? Should our tags have the new
names? And will this help or confuse our customers? We could add the new name
to the old name with a slash i.e. Chrysanthemum/Dendranthema but some growers
will use the old name and some the new – this is the case with Actea/Cimicifuga
for example. Cimicifuga has had this new name for years, but very few people, including
some awfully good gardeners, use it or know it.

Do you
know Solenostemon scutellarioides? That’s the new name for some of our good friends Coleus blumei. I’m not going to be
able to remember that; to be honest, I didn’t even know the second name of
Coleus was blumei, and when they shelved the name coleus not all of the plants
became scutellarioides. Instead a number of them were moved into the
plectranthus category. And of course, to bring us full circle, my
adored Dicentra spectabilis has now got a new Latin name as well. Its Lamprocapnos spectabilis – I mean come on, are they kidding
me? There’s no way I’m not going to mangle that.But I’m going to still beg you to try and use the Latin
name, if only to prevent you from picking up the annual Chinese Forget-Me-Nots
(Cynoglossum amiable) and planting them all in your shade garden
expecting them to self seed into a big carpet of blue Forget-Me-Nots which is
actually an entirely different species of plant. What you want is the Myosotis
sylvatica –the word Myosotis coming
from the Greek word for mouse’s ear, and although the flowers look remarkably
similar they’re very little else that about them that is.

Paige Patterson says
there’s no such thing as too many hydrangeas – thus the ‘After Midnight’ in her
car.